Elena Vanishing (12 page)

“I don't need to get on that thing,” I say with a smile. “You guys are obsessed.”

I know my number, of course. But I would never say it out loud. And I never step on a scale in public. It's one of my rules.

“Guess Elena's weight!” Stevie says. He hoists me into the air. “I could bench-press two of you,” he says.

Vince snorts. “I'd like to wrestle in her weight category!”

With dignity, I disengage myself. “You people are morons,” I tell them kindly. Then Barbara and I leave to walk to Burger King.

Barbara orders a burger and eats it on the way back. I order a chocolate shake and pretend to drink it on the way back.

She's an athlete
, says the voice in my head.
She deserves to eat. You don't.

In the remaining minutes of break, the two of us sit in a corner of the crowded foyer and talk. Mainly, we worry over grades. Barbara has four younger siblings. She needs to earn scholarships. And me, I want to pay my own way.

Lindsay joins us. She's got a container of French fries. It doesn't take me long to realize that she's chewing the fries and then surreptitiously spitting them into her Coke cup.

That's a wannabe trick!
scoffs the voice in my head.
Who does she think she's fooling?

A shake is the only way to go. With the lid on, no one can tell how much or how little you've been drinking.

Five minutes till the bell. Time to check makeup. Barbara and I head to the girls' restroom. On the way, I carelessly drop the chocolate shake through the hole of a covered trash can—my favorite trash
can in the school. Because of the cover, no one can see the melted shake pop open and spill.

As Barbara and I check our mascara, I hear a telltale sound: a toilet flush and a soft flurry of noise. A few seconds later, a cheerleader comes out of the stall. She pushes her hair back from her face and pulls a toothbrush out of her Juicy Couture bag.

What a loser move!
chuckles the voice in my head.
She's just going to brush the acid in so it will rot those nice straight teeth. Pretty soon it'll be time for veneers.

Next class is Mr. Burke, AP English, but I won't be going today. I give Barbara my assignment before heading to my locker.

“Will you turn it in for me?” I ask. “And email me the new assignment? Mom's picking me up for a doctor's appointment.” And I think but don't add:
Even though I don't want to go.

“Sure,” Barbara says, and I fight my way through the unruly crowd toward my locker.

Herr Braun, my German teacher, intercepts me outside his door. “Elena, I am glad I see you,” he says. He puts the stress on the first syllable of my name, the German way, and I love him for that because it reminds me of my friends at the boarding school.

“I'm glad to see you, too, Herr Braun,” I say in German.

Herr Braun's eyes twinkle at this. He's such a softie. I love him for that, too.

“Elena, we want you to give one of the speeches at graduation,” he tells me in German. “One of the two German speeches. I'll work with you on a topic later, but for now, I need to know if you are willing.”

So I'll speak at the graduation ceremony. Take
that
, you son-of-a-bitch psychiatrist who said I wouldn't have a senior year! But I keep my face in control and don't let the glee I'm feeling show.

“It will be an honor,” I say.

“You deserve it,” Herr Braun says warmly. “You work so hard.”

The bell rings, and I hurry away.

As Mom drives me to the doctor, I tell her about the Marine with the abscess. I tell her about Dr. T. and about the new group of Army trainees. I tell her anything, in short, to keep her from asking questions. My stories are like sandbags I pile up on a bank to keep the river flowing where it belongs.

This year, a gap has formed between Mom and me. We're suspicious of each other. She hasn't stopped watching what I eat (or what I don't eat), and I can't stop thinking about what I learned at Drew Center. She makes me feel guilty and uneasy, and I see guilt and unease in her eyes, too. And right now we're driving to a German doctor to see why—after three more trips to the hospital and another cardiology exam—my supposedly healed-up heart still hurts.

That's because it isn't my heart, the doctor tells us. He thinks it's a condition called costochondritis: the cartilage holding my ribs to my breastbone is riddled with small cracks. To test his theory, he gives me an incredibly painful shot in the chest.

“The shot will help us determine exactly what's going on,” he says. “If the pain goes away, it's costochondritis without a doubt. If it continues, then it's probably a bad case of acid reflux—that's acid from the stomach inflaming the membrane of the esophagus. So be sure to let me know the results.”

We leave the doctor's office and walk back to the car. The shot has left me shaky, and I feel dizzy.

Dinnertime's coming
, warns the voice in my head.
Do something, or you're going to get even fatter!

“Swing by base and drop me off at the hospital,” I say. “I want to put in a couple of hours at the chaplain's wing.”

“But I want to start supper,” Mom protests. “We're having chicken and rice tonight.” I try to keep my face blank, but Mom sees me wince. “I thought you loved chicken and rice.”

“Sure, when I was seven,” I say. “You can just give me a fiver, and I'll eat at the hospital food court. Look, I need to fit in all the volunteer hours I can. It's important for my college applications.”

Mom walks a few steps in silence. In her eyes, I can see the battle taking place inside her mind. Mom should work on her self-control. It's way too easy to guess what she's thinking.

“Do you
promise
you'll eat at the food court?” she asks.

“I promise.”

So she fishes a five-dollar bill out of her purse.

Mom drops me off by the hospital, and I slouch my way through the long halls. That injection site really hurts. I wish I could stop breathing for a while.

The place I volunteer in the evenings is a little building just off the chaplain's wing. It's full of new clothes, toiletries, and donated odds and ends that we give to the wounded soldiers when they arrive. They get flown in straight from the battlefield, so all their gear is left behind.

“Elena, honey!” the volunteer coordinator calls out with a big smile on her face. “You're just in time. We got five boxes in today, and I need somebody to sort through them.”

So I kneel down in a corner with an open box in front of me. It will be Christmas. And it will be hell.

First comes the Christmas part. I open up an envelope full of homemade cards from a second-grade class somewhere in Maine.

My Dady is a solder
, one card reads, with a drawing of a stick figure in Army green.
I love you! Come home safe.

I read the cards one by one, then put them in a box by the door. Patients who come in love to read them. One chief master sergeant
who makes trips downrange to the combat zones grabs a big handful of them every time he leaves.

“I send them to the guys who are at the forward outposts,” he told us. “They say those cards keep them sane.”

Next comes a set of small pillows with a waving flag and
Bless you for all you do
embroidered across them. A note attached to the pillows tells me they're from a grieving mother whose Marine daughter died last year in our hospital.

A young man in a gown and robe shuffles through the door. He's pale under his desert tan. The volunteer coordinator calls out a greeting and starts putting together a duffel bag for him.

“Have a seat,” she says. “I'll take care of it. You're a size large. Do you need a toothbrush and toiletries?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he says. Then, shyly, “I don't have my per diem money yet. Can you just take my name and room number for right now?”

“All this stuff is free for you,” the volunteer coordinator says.

He looks shocked. “Really? Thanks!”

She gives him one of her big, warmhearted smiles. “No, honey. Thank
you
.”

I reach into my box again. There's an expensive get-well card. That's nice. But inside someone has written,
I'm glad you're suffering, you Goddamn babykiller. I hope to God you got your legs blown off.

This is the part that's hell.

The young man hasn't sat down. He seems not to know what to do with himself. He shuffles over near me and looks into the box. “Good stuff?” he asks.

“Oh, sure,” I say, hiding the card. “It's like Christmas!” Except when it isn't. “Do you want me to grab that chair for you? You really don't have to stand.”

“Well . . . I kinda do,” he confesses. When I look confused, he blushes. “It's shrapnel,” he says, pointing vaguely behind him. “They're operating tomorrow.”

“Oh. I'm so sorry!” I blurt out.

He shrugs and gives me a sheepish grin. The volunteer coordinator brings him his loaded bag, and he shuffles away.

I reach into the box again. Fifty decals:
I believe in heroes
. I give them to the volunteer coordinator so she can stick them on the duffel bags.

Two women with buzz haircuts and black Army jogging shorts limp in. One is on crutches and has a thigh-high cast. The other has her foot in a big plastic boot. They've been here before, and they're back now just to look around. A hospital doesn't have many places to wander.

The women find the blue satin prom dress on the rack. Laughing, they hold it up to their battered bodies. Then they fall silent as the rich, shiny fabric slips across their rough hands.

I don't know who decided to donate a brand-new prom dress to help out wounded soldiers, but it was a stroke of genius. None of the female soldiers takes it, although any of them could. But they love to hold it and remember what it was like to wear pretty things.

I reach into my box again. A box of chocolates that's suspiciously light, and the plastic wrapper is suspiciously altered. I slice through it and open the box.

Every paper wrapper is empty, and stained. I'm guessing that somebody spit in them.

A tech in green scrubs leads in a burly African American man who's still wearing his ragged desert fatigues. A white bandage wraps across his eyes and all the way around his head. Dried blood has leaked out and crusted on his cheek.

The burly man bumps into a shelf and stands listening as bottles of shampoo tumble to the floor. Then he listens as we scramble to pick them up.

“I'm sorry about that,” he tells us sadly. “It's my first day blind.”

Shocked silence falls over the room. I don't know what to say.

But silence isn't the right answer, either.

“Well, we're glad to have you here, honey,” says the volunteer coordinator, and I see the bandaged face turn toward her warm, sincere voice. “It's just fine. Don't you worry about a thing.”

My phone rings. Mom is waiting outside—already! And I forgot to eat.

You're lying
, says the voice in my head.
You promised her, but you knew you weren't going to.

“Did you have supper?” Mom asks as soon as I open the car door. No “Hello.” No “How did it go?” They're the very first words out of her mouth!

Lie again
, prompts the voice in my head.
Go on! You're good at it.

“Yep,” I say. I climb into the backseat and pull out my headphones.

“How's your chest?” Mom asks next—another question I don't need.

“It hurts,” I say as she pulls away from the curb.

“Hurts how?” she wants to know. “Like it did before, or different? Did the shot do anything at all?”

“It just hurts.”

But the fact is that the pain's different now, and that's not a good thing. The excruciating pain around my breastbone has eased, but it's left behind more excruciating pain. Jolts of fire shoot up and down in the soft tissue inside my chest.

Costochondritis
and
acid reflux—I have both of them. I know it's purging that has brought on the acid reflux. And that's not going to go away.

“Is it pain like rib pain?” Mom asks. “An ache? A stab? When you see the doctor next week, you need to be able to tell him.”

“I don't want to see him again,” I say. “I told you these doctors are a waste of time.”

“You're hurting,” she says. “I don't want to see you hurting.”

“It doesn't matter. I'm fine.”

You're lying again
, says the voice in my head.

I turn up the music and lean my head against the window.

It's twilight outside. The days are getting longer, but the sky is over-cast and heavy with storm clouds. My chest hurts. The window under my cheek is cold. I'm tired. Tired, tired, tired. But I have homework.

Mom waves her fingers at me to get my attention. I pull an ear-bud out of one ear.

“Would you like to say the rosary with me?” she asks.

“I just want to listen to music,” I say. “Get Dad to say it with you when we get home.”

“Your dad's already asleep. Please?”

I try to think of something to say that won't sound completely mean.

“I'm really tired,” I say. “And I have homework. I want to nap for a few minutes, and my chest hurts.”

“If your chest hurts, you need to see a doctor,” she says.

I don't have an answer for that.

Mom starts saying the rosary by herself while she drives. I put my headphones back on and turn up the music.

Three months ago, my dog got sick. I got down on my knees and prayed, “Please, Lord, don't make Chip die. Valerie's gone, and Ramona's gone. Chip's the only thing left from when I was happy. He sleeps with me at night and makes me feel safe now that I'm by myself. I can't fall asleep without him. I don't see why he needs to die. He's not that old. Please don't make him die.”